City of Eternals hits closed beta

Back when Ohai formed, mostly I thought “Cute name” and then pretty much forgot about the company. They’ve been keeping a low profile until now, when City of Eternals stepped out of the shadows (and you will, I pray, pardon the pun).

This is a web-based, Facebook-connected MMO featuring vampires and zombies and other things that go bump in the night. Oddly, the coverage I’ve been seeing comes from places like TechCrunch and VentureBeat, not the gaming sites (at least, not the ones I read). Facebook games are suddenly big business (just ask EA) and these techie/vc blogs are paying attention to the money.

I’m not in the beta so I’m not being coy when I tell you I don’t know much about the game, but here’s some video from TechCrunch. Hard to really tell much about any depth that may or may not be present, based on the rather simple combat shown, but hopefully their pool of testers will broaden considerably in the near future. You can sign up to be considered for beta here, but you may need to log into your Facebook account on the way to that link.

2 thoughts on “City of Eternals hits closed beta

  1. Ummmm. 1993 called, they want their sprite-based isometric graphics back.

    Do people actually want to play this daft drivel? I can’t believe that people are seriously promoting that the “next big thing” is going to be these games. Sure, you can get money from suckers for a little while but “persistent revenue stream” won’t be the case here.

    I predict that in 4 years, these will be just as popular as myspace is now. Oh wait…

    Seriously, I hate to see development resources going in this direction. I get that there is money in these things. To me, it really is the de-evolution of gaming. I guess to get the breadth of audience they want this is what they have to do.

    HL Mencken was right when is said; “No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”

  2. @genda – “To me, it really is the de-evolution of gaming.”

    I agree in general terms that this whole X-ville (Farmville, Yoville, Fishville…etc) Facebook gaming movement is setting gaming back quite a bit. I mean, really EA? $300-$400 million for Playfish?

    What bugs me has nothing to do with the graphics and everything to do with the “pay to advance” microtransaction model. I’ll still take a look at City of Eternals to see if there’s enough ‘meat’ there to keep my occupied on my lunch hour, without me have to, y’know, fill out surveys or sign up for netflix in order to restore my health.

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